The Strange Happening of Rosetta N Maur
by Infinityscripts
Summary: They told her that the brain tumor would cause memory loss, but what about memory replacement? A coma places Rosetta N Maur in an entirely different world that she has never been in- yet always known. War is brewing, however, and she seems to be in the center of it. Hobbit AU
1. Chapter 1

Trust me; you don't want to be the hero.

You're rolling your eyes- aren't you? Or you just let out a deep puff of a sigh because, after all, that is what every hero thinks. They are all humble, quiet and honorable, always saving the day but never wanting to be recognized for it. When in reality, heroism has perks, glory and fame being a few. But I'm afraid, dear reader, that you are mistaken. Whatever book you've read is a lie. Whatever story you've heard was told incorrectly, because no one, absolutely no one, wants to be the hero.

And here's why.

I was twenty three when I began to lose my memory. The doctors said it was due to a brain tumor, I had a few months to live and everyone, my brothers, sisters, parents and friends would have to be ready to say goodbye. Let's just say those first few weeks weren't easy. Nor any day that followed.

The memory loss started simply enough, my shoes were left untied or my dog unfed. I'd send out the same email twice, or in the best cases, put salt in my coffee.

Things started to change after the first month, dizziness and headaches became prominent, I couldn't walk around without getting the urge to vomit, my eating patterns became irregular and before the second month was out my sister was taking care of my dog as the doctors took care of me.

I never really forgot the basics, something I was grateful for. I knew who my family was, I knew where I had worked for the past six months, and I surely knew my own name. Rosetta N. Maur, my mom had named me after my grandmother. My dad picked out my middle name- whatever that was.

Everything got a little weird when I hit the sixth week.

Events started to switch out in my head, the good and the bad ones. Suddenly I didn't spend Christmas with my family. Christmas didn't exist. In its place I chopped wood with my father outside of our humble shack of a home, snow piling up around our ankles as my surely frost bitten fingers gripped the handle of an axe. Instead of playing Mario kart with my little sister, I fed ducks along the river while my father fished downstream. I wasn't a kid on the swing set; I was a kid sewing barley in a field, sweat pouring down my face as I made jokes with a friend.

_Not just any friend,_ my mind always corrected._ Ara._

Ara. A weird name isn't it? Aravacson Tayst. Suddenly I began to see him everywhere; we walked the streets of our little village of Hobbiton together, grinning as we snuck apples away from vendors and played pranks on the Sackville Bagginses. I'd laugh as he tried to get the attention of Maria Cotton, she was, after all, much too good for a poor farm boy like him. He'd laugh in turn as I attempted to impress the rich and respectable Bilbo Baggins, because my social status was not much better than his. I was there when his father was incapacitated from the fever that swept the land when we were twelve.

Where was I again? The ventilator was doing its job, breathing wasn't as much of an effort as it had been before. There were beeps in the room I was in, it was white, I noticed, with a tiled ceiling and open cabinets that held a variety of strange compartments. A lady dressed in blue stood at my side, "It's okay hun," she said, "We've got you all figured out now. Your parents will be here any minute."

And there you have it. I grinned, and closed my eyes.

"Idiot."

"Ro."

"Ro."

"Ro wake up you useless piece of-"

I rolled over, rubbing my palm against my forehead and then down my face, pulling at the sweaty skin and chapped lips I found there. The voice belonged to someone familiar who sat a yard away, poking at the fire with an already charred stick.

"Good, you're up." He said- a wicked grin on his face. I soon recognized the stranger as Ara, because no one had perfect teeth like that. "I was a hairsbreadth away from rolling you off that cliff."

I groaned and sat up. "What?"

"That one, right there," he said, pointing with his fire poking stick. I turned to see that there was indeed, a drop off less than half a mile away. I glanced around. We sat in the middle of a dense forest, pines towered above us and birds chirped quietly every other moment. A mosquito buzzed somewhere near me. The sky was at that strange point between darkness and a sunset, or was it a sunrise? I glanced down, I was laid out on a thin, brown blanket, the fabric of which was coarse and rough beneath my fingertips.

"C'mon," Ara's voice caught my attention. He tossed me piece of the dried meat he had pulled from his pack. "We'll need to get on our feet if we want to reach the camp by sundown."

"Camp?" I asked, taking a bite out of the poorly seasoned meat as I came to sit up. Ara laughed. "You really are out if it, aren't you? You couldn't have hit your head that hard."

"Apparently I did," I mumbled, glancing up at him. "What was it that hit me again?"

Ara grunted, "Well, take no offence to it, but I did. You weren't acting yourself, you tried to run away from me."

"I did?"

He nodded. "One minute we were walking through the woods, the next you took off into the brush. I chased you for at least a mile before you tripped, screaming at you to stop the entire time. But you, being the idiot that you are, kept going, and so I, being the dashing, yet innocently confused hero that I am, did what I had to do and hit you over the back of the head. I daresay it worked."

"The amount of apology in your voice is really too much." I said, rubbing the bump behind my ear that he had no doubt put there. I did have a terrible head ache, but it wasn't as bad as it was before. What was the cause of the previous one again?

We finished our food and I stood, collecting up the blanket I was sleeping on and shoving it into my own pack. I closed my eyes as I did up the final button on the leather bag beneath me. Everything was a blur.

"Ara, I think you really did hit me too hard." I said softly, and my friend looked over at me from where he crouched putting out the fire, the smallest hint of concern etched onto his strangely angular face. He never had gained any weight. "I did?"

I nodded, swinging my pack over my shoulder. I couldn't remember what had happened the night before, nor the week before, let alone the reason we were in a forest sleeping in the rough. It was altogether strange.

I explained this to him, and Ara chewed on his thumb, eyes focused on the dying embers he was piling dirt over. "Well that is a mysterious happening. Shall I start from the beginning?"

I nodded, grateful for what I had hoped to be closure to the concerning lack of information in my brain.

"In the year two thousand eight hundred and eighty six, a hobbit lass named Hona fell in love with the dashing young Reddo, and together they had a daughter named Rosetta-"

"Not that part," I said, rolling my eyes. "Just… why am I here?"

"Well if you really want to get into the tale of the birds and the bees-"

"No," I interrupted, pointing at the needle covered ground. "I mean here. Right here in this forest. I don't understand. Why aren't we in the Shire?"

His eyes widened. "You really don't remember- do you? Well, putting it simply, we're trying to find your father."

I swallowed as a bit of memory floated by. I reached out to grab it, and when I did I felt a strange down beat in my chest, that feeling that you get when you just barely miss cutting yourself with a knife, or just barely save yourself from falling. I had just barely caught the memory.

"Orcs raided my farm, they took my father."

He nodded, voice growing somber. "Your mum's been going mad, and we need to get him back before the harvest."

I breathed, feeling my heart beat come down a bit. "Yes, we need to find the orcs that took him."

"And those orcs are currently camped out near the eastern border, if our sources are correct."

Our sources were the hobbits themselves that had been driven out the day before. They were correct.

"We're going to sneak in and get him out."

"But that's suicide!" I spluttered. The orcs were easily thrice our size, completely merciless and brave to a fault. "We don't have weapons and it's just the two of us, and it's not as if we'd know how to use a sword anyways! We'll lose our heads in there!"

Ara grinned, and took out a small, red painted box looking item from his pack. It had a thin, flared string coming out from beneath the folds of the paper. It was a bomb- I realized. It was the one he had been working on ever since Gandalf had first shown him the ways of firework making.

"Perhaps, but they'll lose something greater."

* * *

A/N: Hey everyone! I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this... or if it makes any sense. I'm functioning on about three hours of sleep right now. Don't worry, you'll see some Hobbit characters soon enough. So if you don't get the idea: Rosetta begins to have her memories replaced by those of an alternate version of her in Middle Earth. She goes into a coma and that coma flings her into it, with only a basic understanding of her past. Let me know what you think! Sorry for any spelling/grammar errors... I'm tiiiiiiiiiiiiired!


	2. Chapter 2

We arrived at the farm where the orcs were camped just after sundown, and waited in the brush until the sky had fully darkened. I watched in fear from where I lay beneath the foliage with Ara as the orcs demolished the place. The field had been completely burned down; the crops that would have given the owner's their winter's meals were completely gone. The orcs sat currently at the edge of the pasture, using wood torn from the barn to roast a few sheep that had not managed to run away in time.

"I don't see my father," I whispered, squinting in the hopes of finding him, or any other hobbit for that matter. "Do you think they could have killed him?"

"No," said Ara, "I watched them drag him into the forest while we got your sisters and brothers out. If they really wanted him dead they would have done it right then and there."

"But what if he isn't here? What if he escaped?"

Ara swallowed, glancing down at the bomb he held in his fingers. "Then at least we could get avenge him by taking these orcs out."

"And destroy the farm?"

"It's already destroyed!" he exclaimed in a loud whisper. "At the very least we can prevent something like this from happening again."

An orc grunted loudly in the distance, and we both stilled, not daring to breath. I clutched the wet grass beneath me as I waited for any signs of our discovery. None came.

"When do we move?" I asked.

"In the next few minutes." Ara said, pushing the bomb into my hands, soon following it with flint and steel. "Their firelight should block out anything more than a few feet away. I'm going to search for him and anyone else that they might have kidnapped. You're going to stay here with the bomb just in case. If or when I find them, I'm going to come back and set it off. If something goes awry however… well… you do know how to use flint and steel, correct?"

I puffed. "Obviously."

"Good," he said, rising carefully to his feet. "Wish me luck."

"Be careful," I hissed, and he grinned before running off.

I watched as he dodged between trees and the burnt lumps that remained of the crop, crouching down quickly every time an orc turned. I could not help but think how great a thief he would make, should he choose to put his assets to that field.

My heart leapt into my throat as an orc stood, peering out into the general direction that Ara was in. I wanted nothing more than to scream at him to stop, to crouch down and wait until the orc had returned to its activities, but Ara was oblivious and kept ambling through the outskirts of the camp.

The orc however, didn't seem to notice him, and slowly went back down to his knees. Ara continued on and I let out a sigh of relief.

"What was that?" I heard a rough, guttural voice question from my right. I turned to see two orcs that seemed to be on patrol not ten feet from me. How had I not heard them?

"It came from over there," one said, and they slowly began to approach the bush I had been hiding in. I bit my lip and tried to pull my knees up to my chest, but only caused the branches around me to rustle.

"Ha!" One of them exclaimed as they came closer. And despite my fervent prayers, one of them latched a hand onto the back of my shirt and lifted me up from the ground. I immediately cried out, my heart rate increasing tenfold as I struggled to get out of the orc's grip.

"Looks like we left one hobbit behind," he sneered, pulling out a rusted, jagged knife. The orc beside him sniggered. "We'll soon take care of that."

I kicked as hard as I could until my foot came into contact with a knee. He howled in pain and dropped me. Terrified, I immediately tried to scramble away, but before I could get a few feet the other orc seemed to catch up, and his foot connected with my ribs. I gasped and turned onto my back, only to realize my mistake when the end of his spear touched my chest.

"It won't hurt for long, little one," he growled, dark eyes flashing.

I took a breath, preparing myself to die.

Only- the strike never came. Instead I heard the loud _thud _of something hitting the ground, followed by a high pitched shriek. I sat up to see that the orc that had been standing over me was now laid flat out on the ground, a throwing axe lodged in his chest. The one I had kicked in the knee was crumbled on its stomach, the handle of a knife stuck out from the folds in its rather primitive armor.

I glanced around, breathing harshly. Before I could get to my feet another orc was running towards me, shouting something in its guttural tongue. I scrambled back, elbows scraping against the grass in a vain effort to escape. Before the orc could reach me however, someone had reached _it._

It was a dwarf, I noted in confusion. He had shoulder length, curly blond hair and a rather thick build. He had jumped atop the orc from beside it, felling his axe into its skull and then pulling away with a shout. He glanced around and swung his axe again, decapitating another orc that had followed.

He looked back at me, blue eyes flashing. "Who are you?" he shouted amidst the chaos, taking another swing at an oncoming orc.

"I could ask you the same thing," I enquired, getting to my feet.

My eyes widened. Unlike I had expected, the majority of the orcs were actually at the other side of the camp, chasing after- I swallowed in fear.

"Ro!" Ara shouted as he ran, "Ro, set it off!"

With shaky hands I stooped to the ground to collect the explosive, as well as the flint and steel. "What are you doing?" The dwarf asked from beside me, but I paid him no mind as I struck my tools together, and with a strange amount of luck, set the fuse alight on the first try.

I stood then, not sure of how much time I had before the bomb was set off, then took my aim, hoping that my arm would be able to throw it the fifty yards it would need to go.

"Let me-" he started, but the explosive left my hand and sailed through the air. I watched as it landed amid the mass of orcs on the other side of the camp, feeling sick that I could no long here Ara's shouts.

"How far will the explosion go?" asked the dwarf beside me, and my eyes widened with realization. I was almost too late to grab him by the collar and pull him to the ground; before we even fell the sky was filled with fire, my ears ringing against the impossibly loud _boom_ that echoed in my skull. I grunted harshly as the dwarf fell on top of me, he was quite a bit heavier than he looked, and he looked rather heavy.

My eyes opened briefly to see a pair of people peering down at me. I recognized them as my mother and father. The earlier was resting her head against my father's chest, tears streaming down her face. "Hang on," she whispered, and I blinked twice, my gaze leaving her and then reaching the white tiled ceiling above me. All seemed to fade.

Finally the air cooled down and the noise ceased. I coughed as he rolled away from me, smoke filling my lungs. I spit harshly in an effort to dispel the intrusive gas, and with that I shakily got to my feet, peering through the smoke at what was once a simple farm.

The surrounding treetops had been set ablaze. The barn was practically gone, and charred rubble covered the field. Not an orc was in sight.

Almost as if in a daze, I stepped over the crumbled bush I had been hiding behind and made my way forward, wiping away the tears that streamed from my irritated eyes.

"Ara!" I called out, his name soon followed by my own harsh coughs. No one responded. I called out again, feeling my stomach drop as I came to the very possible realization that I could've just killed my best friend.

"Ara!"

"Wait-" a voice from behind me piped up, and I turned to see the blonde dwarf that had protected me. "You don't know what's out there."

I ignored him, taking another step forward. "Ara!"

I stumbled over a charred lump, but dared not look down at what was sure to be the remains of an orc. I nearly gagged as my eyes settled over the ground ahead. There were an awful lot of charred lumps. Tears filled my eyes; one of them must have been Ara.

My heart sank as I reached the edge of the forest without a sign of my friend. I found myself pulling at my hair as I did when I was under stress, letting out a half sob as I found myself alone and defeated. I had lost my father, and now my friend.

"Ro…" a trembling voice echoed, and I turned quickly. "Ara?"

"I'm over here." He gasped, and I followed the sound of his voice, letting out a cry of relief as I found him laid out beside a tree, a hand pressed to the bleeding hole where his right eye had once been.

"You're alive," I said, falling to my knees beside him.

"Most of me," he said, a half grin- half wince on his face.

I reached out to take his hand from where it rested against his face, but he held it fast. "It's gone," he affirmed. "Definitely gone."

"Was… was it the explosion?" I asked, and he shook his head softly. "The orcs decided to have a bit of fun with me when they caught me. If you haven't noticed, my pinky finger is also missing."

I nearly vomited as I looked down at the bleeding stump of an appendage. Dear Yavanna…

"I'm so sorry…" I said softly, taking off my over coat and pressing it against the hole where his eye had been to stifle the bleeding, as well as to save me from gazing at it a moment longer. He grunted in pain, but allowed me to do it all the same.

"I couldn't find your father," he admitted, left eye slowly meeting mine.

"It's alright," I assured, although I felt my heart fall a bit at his news.

He sighed, bloody hands resting in his lap as he let me tend to his wound. "It was worth a try, I guess. Who's this?"

I turned my head to find that the blonde dwarf was indeed still behind me, a look of concerned plastered onto his freckled face.

"You know, I'm not actually sure." I said, "Who are you?"

The dwarf coughed, "My names Fili."

"That's right well and all," said Ara, "But what are you doing here?"

Fili glanced at me for a moment. "I saw…"

"Ro," I suggested.

"Ro," he said with a nod. "I saw Ro get cornered by a couple of orcs, and decided to do what I could."

"Glad to know you're a semi respectable person," Ara grunted. "Now if you'll kindly excuse me, I think I'm about to lose consciousness, so do you imagine you could…"

He leaned forward suddenly, head drooping. With soot covered fingers I helped him to sit up against a tree, he was out cold.

"I need to get him back to the shire." I said, more to myself than to Fili.

"I have a healer nearby," suggested the dwarf. "No less than an hour away."

My eyes narrowed. "How can I trust you?"

Fili shrugged. "The shire is two days from here. Infection will have set in by then."

I glanced over at Ara, who was wincing in his blood loss induced sleep. Feeling my heart grow heavy in fear for him, I nodded.

Hesitantly, the dwarf moved to scoop up Ara in his arms, and my friend let out a gasp as he was lifted from the ground. The blonde glanced at me, his eyes stern. "This way," he said, turning to the east.

"Fili," I asked, stopping him. He turned back to me, and I felt my eyes go to the forest floor to avoid his gaze.

"Thank you."

He laughed- a short dry one that caused me to wonder if he really felt any humor in those moments. "Don't thank me yet."

* * *

A/N: Hey everyone! Busted out another chapter as I got more inspiration. No idea where I'm going with this… well... some of an idea. Romance is to come, just not sure who between. Fili, Ara, or Kili, maybe a different OC or anything else you guys want to suggest. Let me know what you guys think of this!


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